


Needs/Deserves

by eigengrau



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Someone Needs To Give Gordon A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eigengrau/pseuds/eigengrau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Jim Gordon has grown older, as he’s changed, so he has grown into Gotham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needs/Deserves

As Jim Gordon has grown older, as he’s changed, so he has grown into Gotham. It’s almost as if losing everything- his family, his friends, his faith- has shed some weight from his frame, slimming down his soul so that the city suddenly fits in a way it never did before. It sticks to him like a second skin, the grime and sweat settling on his brow, his arms and legs. It used to be that his time with his wife and kids was the best part of his day, but now he tries to avoid his lonely apartment as much as possible. All that’s left for him there are microwave meals and a couch worn down on one side. It’s better to bury himself in his work. He goes on street patrols, which annoys most of the old guard, used to a commissioner who sat in an office and delivered orders from on high. He flicks through reports and reads every sentence. He stays until late at night, until everyone else has gone home. There’s a rumor that he sleeps curled up under his desk. It’s not true, though he has occasionally fallen asleep on stacks of paperwork and woken up with ink stains on the lapels of his shirt.

 

He’s getting old. He knows that- is hyper-aware of it, in fact. Every morning there’s another strand of grey in his hair. Every time he climbs the stairs there’s another ache deep in his bones. His vision’s always been spotty but he needs to wear his glasses pretty much all the time, now.

 

He sees the kids three times a year, at Christmas and on each of their birthdays. Barbara doesn’t like bringing them to Gotham, so he takes the train to Cleveland. The house they live in is small and clean and bright, with white painted walls and muted suburban charm. James is going to college soon, a business major at some state university. When Jim sees his daughter, a young woman now, she barely looks up from her computer screen to say hello. Barbara is seeing a housing contractor called Dean. They’ve been together for nearly four years. She’ll be remarrying any day now.

 

On his three yearly visits, when he’s not desperately trying to connect with his kids, Jim tends to spend a lot of time in his hotel room. Ohio disagrees with him.

 

He could have been a teacher. Probably should have. He had the mind for it, the grades, the passion for knowledge. He had the curiosity. But where his guidance counselors and his parents and his friends thought he should apply that drive to Remedial Biology, to Algebra 1 or AP English Lit or US History, he always knew that academia wouldn’t be enough. Not for him.

 

He’d always had the curse of the detective: needing to know more, see more, do more. Needing to push himself to the limit. To go further.

 

He knows that he’s running out of time; that the mayor is planning on getting rid of him any day now and finding someone younger. Someone more politico-friendly. Someone who doesn’t act like any second the world is going to come crashing down around his shoulders. He tries to do what he can in the time that he’s got. The men around him seem to have erased their memories of the Before Time, of the days when Gotham was filthy with crime, sick and slowly dying. But he can’t forget; can’t move on. They say that he’s stuck in the past. It’s true. He knows himself far too well to stay unaware of his own shortcomings. And after all, familiarity breeds contempt.

 

Though the nightmares are rarer these days he still wakes from time to time in a cold sweat, blood freezing in his veins as he blinks the last dreamed fragments of Harvey Dent’s distorted leer from the backs of his eyelids. Sometimes he calls Cleveland, making some excuse just to hear his son’s voice, to make sure he’s all right. Others he stares at the blinking red digits of his alarm clock and waits for the sun to rise, listening to his own deafening heartbeat in the silence of the empty room.

 

There’s a carefully folded piece of paper in the inside pocket of his best coat. Once a year for eight years, he takes it out, holds it tight in his grip, and stares out at a crowd from behind a podium in the gardens of Wayne Manor. Once a year for eight years, he folds it up and puts it back in his pocket. It spends the twelve months in between burning like a brand against his chest. If he had a dollar for every time he thought about destroying it, he would probably be able to afford a nicer apartment. But he never destroys it, and it never leaves him. It hides inside of him, like an anchor in his ribcage, cold and heavy against his heart.

 

The force these days is filled with good men who have forgotten about the past, men who have grown used to a city without organized crime, without mayhem and chaos. The force is a million times less corrupt than it used to be, but instead of being filled with dirty cops it’s filled with men and women who’ve grown lax and lazy. Gordon worries what will happen when he’s gone: if they’ll step up to the job or fall down on it.

 

He worries, but there are a few good ones left. There’s a young officer, Blake, who seems to always be on his toes. It’s the taut kind of vigilance that people tease Gordon about, the kind they mistake for paranoia. Blake reminds him of himself, thirty years younger. He could leave the force in hands like his. He tries to tell himself that his fondness for the younger man is based solely on his police work, but the fact that Blake seems to be one of the last supporters of the Batman has definitely earned him brownie points in Gordon’s eyes.

 

He should really promote Blake to detective one of these days.

 

Harvey Dent Day sneaks up on him like it does every year, leaping out from behind the calendar and shouting “Boo!” He picks out his least wrinkled suit and lays a clean tie over the back of his chair. He throws on his best coat and hears the paper crinkle in his pocket. He’ll pull it out again, and hide it again. It’s not time.

 

It might never be time.

 

Jim Gordon closes the door of his empty apartment and starts the journey to Wayne Manor, praying that this Harvey Dent Day will go faster than the other seven.

 


End file.
